Chocolate history starts out in Latin America, where cacao trees grow wild.

The
first people to use chocolate were probably the Olmec of what is today southeast
Mexico. They lived in the area around 1000 BC, and their word, “kakawa,” gave us
our word “cacao.” Unfortunately, that’s all we know. We don’t know how (or even if)
the Olmec actually used chocolate.

We do know, however, that the Maya, who inhabited the same general area a thousand
years later (from about 250-900 AD), did use chocolate. A lot. And not just
internally. It is with the Maya that chocolate history really begins.

The cacao beans were used as currency. 10 beans would buy you a rabbit or a
prostitute. 100 beans would buy you a slave. Some clever person even came up with a
way to counterfeit beans – by carving them out of clay. The beans were still used
as currency in parts of Latin America until the 19th century!

The Maya also used chocolate in religious rituals; it sometimes took the place of
blood. Chocolate was used in marriage ceremonies, where it was exchanged by the
bride and groom, (I think I will have to revive this tradition), and in baptisms.
They even had a cacao god.

But the Maya prepared chocolate strictly for drinking. Chocolate history doesn’t
include solid chocolate until the 1850s. Except for that, the way the Maya prepared
chocolate wasn’t too much different from the way it’s prepared today. First, the
beans were harvested, fermented, and dried. The beans were then roasted and the
shells removed, and the rest was ground into a paste. The paste was mixed with hot
water and spices, such as chili, vanilla, annatto, allspice, honey, and flowers.
Then the mixture was frothed by pouring it back and forth between two containers.
The Maya thought the froth was one of the best parts. Chocolate was also mixed with
corn and water to make a sort of gruel. It was probably similar to the chocolate
and corn drink pinole, still enjoyed in Latin America today.

Photo - Mayan with Chocolate

If dollar bills were edible, would you eat them? Probably not, unless you had some
to spare. The same was true of the Maya – usually only the rich drank much
chocolate, although working folks probably enjoyed chocolate every now and then
too. The rich enjoyed drinking their chocolate from elaborately painted chocolate
vessels. Emperors were buried with jars of chocolate at their side. Clearly, they
wanted to make chocolate history themselves.

So it’s no surprise that when the Aztecs conquered the Maya, they kept the
chocolate tradition alive. From about 1200-1500, the Aztecs dominated the region
and continued using cacao as currency. Because cacao could not grow in the capital
city, Tenochitlan (where Mexico City is today), it had to be imported through
trading and, what else? Taxes!

The Aztec drank their chocolate much like the Maya, although they sometimes liked
it cold. One chocolate history legend has it that the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl
brought cacao to earth and was cast out of paradise for giving it to man. Only the
gods were fit to drink chocolate!

In 1502, Columbus and his son, Ferdinand, were in the area, doing the usual
conquering and such, when they came across a dugout canoe laden with supplies. They
promptly captured it and ordered the natives to carry the loot on board their ship.
In the process, somebody spilled some cacao, and the natives ran for the beans “as
if an eye had fallen from their heads,” according to Ferdinand. Columbus could have
been known as the first white guy to “discover” chocolate, but he blew his chance
to make chocolate history by forgetting all about the incident.
In 1519, Cortez and his cronies arrived in the Aztec capital, where cacao trading
was in full force, and Montezuma, the Aztec ruler, was rumored to have a billion
beans in storage. They tried chocolate, hated it, and one writer eloquently called
it “more a drink for pigs than a drink for humanity.” Without sugar, cacao was
fairly bitter.

After Cortez and pals conquered the Aztecs, they kept right on using cacao as
currency. By this time a rabbit cost 30 cacao beans. Must have been inflation. But
chocolate history would soon change forever, because Cortez also kept right on
conquering other people. Conveniently, the Spanish had taken over lots of Caribbean
islands. And on those islands was sugar. Next thing you know, somebody put sugar in
chocolate and everybody was clamoring for the stuff.

Photo - Spanish chocolate partyChocolate History in Church

For a while, the Spaniards kept the chocolate secret to themselves. And when
chocolate first made it to Spain, it was considered a health food and a medicine.
Doctors prescribed it for curing fevers, cooling the body, aiding in digestion, and
alleviating pain. The church also approved it as a nutritional supplement to take
while fasting. (That might have been a bad choice, as one bishop was poisoned for
refusing to allow his parishioners to bring chocolate to mass.)

None of that lasted long. Chocolate was too good to be reserved for medicine only.
Plus, it was the first caffeine to reach Europe, beating out coffee and tea by a
few years. Chocolate doesn’t have much caffeine, but when you’ve never had the
stuff, less is more. Other than adding sugar, little had changed in the preparation
of chocolate, although the Spaniards frothed theirs by using a little stick called
a molinillo, which you would place between your palms and whirl to create the
froth.

Chocolate soon made its way to the rest of Europe. Well, the rest of the rich
people in Europe, that is. It was a big hit in Louis XIV’s court. In 1657, the
first chocolate house opened in London. You could go to the chocolate house, have a
drink, play some cards, talk politics, that sort of thing. (Interestingly, Mars is
trying to open a new chapter in the chocolate history books by reviving the
chocolate house tradition. They’ve opened Ethel M’s, an upscale chocolate boutique
designed for hanging out.) Eventually, cinnamon and milk found their way into the
mix.

Photo - French chocolate house

As chocolate spread through Europe, the demand took off. To keep up with the
demand, plantations sprung up, and thousands of people were enslaved to produce
cacao. Rather than rely on the Spanish, the British, the Dutch, and the French
started their own plantations, taking cacao out of Central America and planting it
in their own territories – Sri Lanka, Venezuela, Java, Sumatra, the West Indies,
and Africa. Up until this point, most chocolate was made from a variety of cacao
called criollo. But because forastero beans are easier to grow (never mind that
they don’t taste as good), they were the ones that got shipped ’round the globe,
marking another turning point in chocolate history. Today, 90% of cacao is
forastero.

As the supply increased, prices went down, and chocolate became increasingly
available to the little guy. And when the little guy got a hold of it, chocolate
history really took off. Like in the early 1800s when Coenraad Van Houten, a
Dutchman, created the cocoa press, which smushed the beans and expelled the cocoa
butter (fat), leaving just the cocoa behind. He also came up with a way to wash the
cocoa in an alkali solution (hence “Dutch” cocoa) to make it easier to mix with
water. Who hasn’t had the experience of cocoa globbing up on their spoon?
Chocolate History Firms Up
Photo - Vintage chocolate ad

In the 1850s, Englishman Joseph Fry changed my life by adding more cocoa butter,
rather than hot water, to cocoa powder and sugar. The world’s first solid chocolate
was born.

In 1875, Daniel Peter and Henri Nestle added condensed milk to solid chocolate,
creating a milk chocolate bar.

In 1879, Swiss chap Rudolphe Lindt invented the conch, a machine that rotated and
mixed chocolate to a perfectly smooth consistency.

By 1907, Milton Hershey’s factory was spitting out 33 million kisses per day.

Advertising and World Wars (where soldiers got chocolate as part of their rations)
just kept increasing the popularity of the stuff. Today, over 3 billion tons of
cacao supplies a 35 billion dollar chocolate industry.

Chocolate history has had its dark side. Slave-like conditions and child labor
still produce much of the world’s chocolate. Gazillions of acres of rainforest have
been razed to make room for cacao trees. Yucky tasting Forastero beans threatened
to take over entirely.

Photo - Vintage chocolate adFortunately, some new trends have sprung up. You might
say chocolate history is returning to its roots. Chocolate connoisseurs are buying
more and more Fair Trade and single origin chocolates, which help ensure better
working conditions for farmers and help preserve higher quality cacao varieties,
like criollo. The higher quality beans are grown in an environment that is very
close to natural, thereby helping preserve the rainforest. And chocolate snobs
devote more time to savoring the chocolate rather than shoveling it in. That’s got
to save a few trees right there.